A blog by students at the University of Portsmouth

Looking Forward

Next week, or this week if you are one of those folks who starts counting their week from Sunday, is my last week of lectures ever at Portsmouth. I suppose you could say I’m at the final stretch of my University life. A lot of my friends and I are looking towards next year with fear in our eyes. What are we going to do? Where are we going to live? Will we stay in contact? Where did all our money go?

It’s weird. It reminds me of my last day of college in a way. Exactly the same thoughts were going through my head (my younger, much more hip and cool head). In the same way, I didn’t know what to expect from University, I now have no idea what to expect from life WITHOUT university! I’ve grown quite attached to my little group of friends (or minions as I cheerfully call them whenever we meet up) I’ve gained over the years and in a few months time we will be scattered all over the UK instead of all over Portsmouth. On top of that we won’t be ‘students’ anymore. We will be grown up adults who wear fancy clothes and talk about important things at meetings with serious looks on our faces.

As I said. Weird.

If I said I wasn’t excited though I would be lying. I’m sure it isn’t the same for all people, but I feel that when I finished college, I was still pretty childish and not completely ready for adult responsibilities. University has given me a way to develop as a person, allowed me to become more mature (even if I choose not to act like it most of the time) so that when I am wearing fancy clothes and at important meetings, I will feel in the right place and be able to deal with whatever the world throws at me. If you are the fun metaphor type of person, I suppose you could say I was like a cake. When I got out of college I was still the ingredients mixed together in the mixing bowl and University helped shape me and cooked me at the right temperature and now I am nearly ready to take out of the oven, the degree I will (hopefully) receive the icing on top. Was that a sufficient metaphor? Or are you just hungry and craving cake now like I am?

Either way, I think the last 3 years will impact heavily on the rest of our lives though, no matter what we go off and do. Whether it be related to our course or we go off and hide in a cave living off sweet corn scavenged from the bins behind a nearby supermarket, we won’t be able to forget the experience we have gained.